If you live in the North East, particularly in Montreal, you have to be as spring-starved as I am. Usually I am good about winter - it's wonderful baking weather and bakers are ever-so-popular in cooler months. But this winter was ridiculous. To celebrate winter's demise, I've been working on Passover and Easter treats but also a knock out Lemon Crumble Tart. The is thanks to my friend Janet who always finds neat trends and lets me know what to conjure up, in BB style. She finds it, lets me know, and then I create it and then share it with you. It's how it works. Janet has one of the best palates I know but she's also most graceful in letting me know where and how to tweak a recipe. If the Lemon Pizza is perfection - you can also thank Janet.

Thanks to everyone who's purchased my newest cookbook When Bakers Cook as well as my other cookbooks. I am honoured but also simply delighted to know we're all cooking and baking on the same page. If I could invite you here for dinner, I would. As I can't, knowing I've handed off my best recipes to you to enjoy, be it soup or cupcakes, is reassuring. We bakers are very mother hen-ish and feeding people well, one way or another, is in our genes or is a particular mandate.

I've been busy dealing with Internet issues but also enjoying discovering some amazing new bakeries and cafes in the city. This time I dragged my friend Joyce. We meet early in the morning, midway between her city home and my suburban one. Joyce comes armed with clothes for a week, snacks, and enough bottled water for the New York marathon. She navigates and I drive and we go from place to place. This time, we hit about 6 new bakeries and ended up with Portuguese Chicken Sandwiches, which we took to the old Italian Market in the city. It was heaven. Good food, nice adventure, great company.

Is your city also bustling with new places? There seems to be a true Renaissance of coffee places here in Montreal. One particular specialty was Premier Moisson, a chain pastry and bread shop in Montreal. They are offering Maple Croissants. They split baked croissants, fill them with maple pastry cream, and then glaze them in maple syrup. They are indescribably delicious and if I made them, I'd eat them all day so I've saved all of us by leaving out the recipes (but it's mostly an assembly - croissants, maple innards and maple glaze), besides which Maple Croissants aren't on the Paleo of Fast Metabolism Diet yet.

This is a short and sweet note, since I have a huge mess in the kitchen to clean up. Blame the Lemon Pizza and Pouding Au Chomeur testing. But one last thing, a Passover Head’s Up. Don’t forget my cookbook, A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking has a whole chapter dedicated to Passover. On the BB site, there’s tons more Passover recipes including a totally awesome Stuffed Brisket.

Previous Monthly Essays from A Note From Marcy:

Essays to tickle your funny bone, wake up your inner baker, twinge on your heartstrings, or make you smile and say, ‘I’ve know the feeling; I know the place”. If you missed an essay, or a season in baking or inner sensibility, we invite you to stroll through our archived Notes From Marcy.